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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 25 Mar 2007 04:24 am |
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Under the heading "Pressure mounts over held sailors" the BBC reports today (25 March) that:
International pressure is mounting on Iran to free 15 Royal Navy personnel, accused by Tehran of "blatant trespassing" into Iranian waters. The EU has called for the Britons to be released immediately.
The Foreign Office insists the eight sailors and seven marines had been carrying out a routine patrol within Iraqi waters in the northern Gulf. The 15 personnel, from Plymouth-based HMS Cornwall, were seized at gunpoint on Friday after boarding a boat. They were from HMS Cornwall, based in Plymouth - the flagship of the coalition-Iraqi force which patrols Iraqi territorial waters in the northern Gulf to combat smuggling. The seizure follows claims that much of the violence against UK forces in Basra is being engineered by Iranian elements, which Tehran denies.
Germany, which holds the EU presidency, has called for the immediate release of the Britons. "The presidency of the council of the European Union calls upon the Iranian government to immediately release the 15 British seamen detained yesterday," its statement on Saturday said. It added that the presidency was consulting closely with the UK government while the German ambassador in Tehran had approached the Iranian government on behalf of all 27 EU countries. The statement was issued at the EU's 50th anniversary summit in Berlin.
Tehran claims the captured sailors have confessed to entering Iran illegally. But the British government insists they were in Iraqi waters and has demanded their immediate release. Iranian armed forces spokesman Gen Ali Reza Afshar told Iranian media the 15 personnel were being interrogated, but were in good health.
Foreign Office junior minister Lord Triesman has met the Iranian ambassador Rasoul Movahedian to demand their immediate release. Saturday's hour-long meeting was described as "frank and civil".
Iran's Fars news agency earlier said the group, which includes one woman, was flown to Tehran, arriving in the capital at 1200 local time (0830 GMT). But that report was later withdrawn from the agency's website.
Meanwhile, the UN Security Council has unanimously voted in favour of new sanctions against Iran for its refusal to suspend its nuclear enrichment programme. The decision broadens the limited sanctions imposed in December 2006.
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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Posted: 25 Mar 2007 04:34 am |
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The last time Iran did this kind of thing was in 1988, during the Iran-Iraq War, when one of its mines sank an American warship.
The Americans responded by sinking six Iranian ships - half the Iranian Navy.
They did it politely and methodically, warning each ship that it was about to be sunk, with the consequence that there was very little loss of life.
You'd think the Iranians would have learned something from this, wouldn't you?
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 4 Apr 2007 05:46 pm |
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I have just read a CNN report that Iran will release the British prisoners.
Extra! Extra! Read all about it! World War Three postponed!
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 5 Apr 2007 01:26 am |
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Here is how BBC correspondent Paul Reynolds has reported on this today:
President Ahmadinejad announced the release of the 15 British naval personnel like a card player flinging down his hand to scoop the pool.
Iran had good cards and played them well. It made its point about defending its borders, dominated international television with pictures of its prisoners and their "confessions" and, when it perhaps judged that it had got as much as it could expect to out of the confrontation, ended it with a flourish.
Iran will project this as a victory (the medals given publicly to the officers who led the operation was an immediate example) against a country still viewed with suspicion in Iran because of its past interventions. It also put out an indirect warning that any attack on its nuclear plants would be met with vigour.
At the same time, the British government can argue that it managed to put enough pressure on Iran to force it to put an end to the confrontation without Britain having to make any formal statement, even of regret, at the incident. Nor was there any linkage to anything else, notably five Iranian officials held in Iraq.
Britain gave Iran an initial period of quiet in which to release the prisoners and when that did not work, went to the UN and the European Union while rallying support in the region. Whether that counted is not known. But certainly Iran complained about it, so it was noticed. Even the Pope joined in the pleas, with references to the sailors being home for Easter, and that might have been designed to appeal to President Ahaminejad's religious feelings.
The decisive moment came with the intervention of Ali Larijani, a senior figure on Iran's National Security Council and the lead negotiator on the nuclear issue, into what had been until then an inconclusive, drawn-out, formal diplomatic exchange through embassies. He contacted Channel 4 News in London, whose staff met him during a visit to Iran a few months ago. He made it clear in an interview on Monday that Iran wanted a diplomatic solution. This went against the mood in Tehran the day before, when hardliners organised a demonstration outside the British embassy.
Mr Larijani's intervention indicated that pragmatists had prevailed. This was matched on the British side by a lowering of the temperature, which proved important as it allowed Iran to say that the British were being less arrogant. When more photos of the prisoners appeared, showing them playing chess and sitting on the floor, chatting and smiling, the UK Foreign Office made no complaint, as it had after earlier pictures.
Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow told British officials about the origin of the Larijani interview at a briefing for correspondents by the Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett on Tuesday. This appeared to galvanise British diplomats into contacting Mr Larijani themselves. That evening, Sir Nigel Sheinwald, Tony Blair's foreign affairs private secretary, spoke to Mr Larijani by phone. President Ahmadinejad's news conference had been postponed from the previous day so presumably a collective decision was taken during the delay.
The president told the BBC's Frances Harrison that he had not wanted a confrontation and suggested that the release had been held up by the British attitude. In any event, he announced the release with some enthusiasm.
One lesson that the British and other Western governments will draw is that Iran cannot be given opportunities like this without a propaganda price being paid. It appeared to observers during the crisis that the Royal Navy adopted the attitude that it was right and that was all there was to it. The navy's confidence was reflected in the fact that the helicopter that was monitoring the ship search preceding the seizure went back to HMS Cornwall without remaining overhead. Yet this, by British calculation, was within three minutes of the arrival of more powerful Iran boats. It is unlikely that there will be such confidence again.
And the incident was set against a background of hostility towards Iran by the British and American forces in Iraq. They have accused the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, whose naval unit took the British party, of helping Shia militias in their attacks on foreign troops. This incident is a reminder that all forces operate in a political context.
The Iranian decision in this case is unlikely to be reflected in the much larger issue of its argument with the Security Council over its enrichment of uranium. It was noticeable that President Ahmadinejad spent much of his statement to the news conference denouncing the Security Council for being the instrument of the United States. He accused the West of trying to deny "scientific knowledge" to Iran, even though it is simply the enrichment process that is in question. His attitude indicates that it will probably be back to confrontation when the next Security Council deadline for Iranian compliance comes on 23 May.
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David Harcourt
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| Joined: | 31 Dec 1969 |
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| Posts: | 1127 |
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Posted: 7 Apr 2007 06:15 am |
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If the world ends slowly enough for some news to come through before it actually happens, my daughter will still be the last to know about it.
A medical student at Otago university, buried deep in her desperately competitive studies, she knew nothing about the Iran crisis until well after the hostages had been released.
There must be billions of people around the world for whom the first intimation of the Extinction Level Event will be the mushroom clouds in the sky, or the sight of the vast tsunami thrown up by the asteroid, or the person next to them abruptly dropping dead from some wildly contagious virus.
I suppose we should envy them. Where ignorance is bliss ...
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